A bi-fuel internal combustion engine is capable of indifferently running on two different types of fuel (typically gasoline and LPG or gasoline and methane). A modern bi-fuel internal combustion thermal engine uses two different types of injectors, each of which is capable of injecting a corresponding fuel type.
Two separate electronic control units, each of which independently controls the other with a corresponding group of injectors, are always used for after-market adaptations of the thermal engine; however, such solution is costly because it requires the installation of two separate and independent electronic control units.
In the case of a thermal engine which is designed to be of the bi-fuel type, it has been suggested to use a single common electronic control unit, which may electrically drive both groups of injectors by means of a switching device which receives as input the command signals from the common electronic control unit and outputs the electric driving signals to both groups of injectors, instead of using two separate, independent electronic control units. For example, the switching device may comprise a plurality of electromagnetic relays, each of which is adapted to electrically connect at least one corresponding injector to the common electronic control unit.
The use of a single common electronic control unit in combination with a switching device provided with electromechanical relays allows to reduce the costs of the fuel feeding system; however, the switching times of the switching device provided with electromechanical relays present a high dispersion with respect to the nominal value because in addition to depending on the manufacturing tolerances they are also heavily affected by the running temperature, the power voltage and the age of the component (i.e. the number of switches performed during the life of the component). Consequently, the common electronic control unit cannot estimate the real switching times with sufficient precision and therefore either a feed overlap (i.e. for a short time both fuels are concurrently supplied into the cylinders) which determines a torque peak or a feeding gap (i.e. for a short period no fuel is fed into the cylinders) which determines a torque gap may easily occur during the fuel changeover (i.e. during the passage from one fuel to the other). In both cases, an irregular operation of the thermal engine occurs with a random, pulsing variation of the engine speed (increase of engine speed in case of feeding overlap or decrease of the engine speed in case of feeding gap).